mushroom bourguignon

It didn’t take long for me to become smitten with Deb Perelman’s established cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen. It started with the mushroom bourguignon. It was delicious and we had enough leftovers for three nights! And then came the most heart-warming and (dare I say it?) quick recipe for chicken noodle soup, followed by the best and simplest brownies. In October 2012 Perelman expanded her online franchise with “The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook,” which was published by Knopf and debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times’s best-seller list for hardcover advice and miscellaneous, remaining in the Top 5 ever since. So this winter I excitedly scooped up my copy and am eager to dive in. Maybe it’s because I can relate to her (we both love to cook in our cramped quarters: small New York City kitchens that actually look incredibly similar), or maybe it’s just because her recipes are at once practical and tasty, easy to follow, and all things I actually want to make (time and again). There are 105 recipes in the book (85 percent original, in that they’ve never appeared on her blog), and over 300 mesmerizing photos (she takes all the beautiful, artistic pictures herself). As a bonus, Perelman is an excellent writer and storyteller, making her cookbook all that much more delicious to devour.